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H&B 'transformation' hoped to demystify health and wellness market

Holland & Barrett is undergoing a transformation, with new product launches and a revamp of its supplement ranges, in a bid to demystify what it describes as “an increasingly complex” health and wellness market.

The British health food retailer now operates more than 1,300 stores worldwide across 16 countries, including the UK, Belgium, China, India, and Saudi Arabia.

At the beginning of this year, H&B unveiled hundreds of new product offerings across its food, active nutrition, and supplement ranges.

Rachel Chatterton, director of product and global brand, said the company kick-started this important “transformation” three years ago, “with the sole purpose of creating products that add quality years to life” and the overarching goal to “demystify the health and wellness market”.

“We've been on, what's fair to say, a fairly phenomenal journey over the last three years, and we are really just getting going,” she told an audience at Vitafoods Europe 2025, held in Barcelona last month.

Holland & Barrett: Healthier foods, smarter sports, and simpler supplements

The first part of this transformation, according to Chatterton, was the “three-pronged” launch of more than 500 food products in January.

Holland & Barrett's food range, she explained, features “naturally nutritious” items like fruits, nuts, seeds, and legumes; “healthy swaps”, such as plant-dense pasta sauces; and “with benefits” products, like fortified cereals, kombuchas, teas, and superfoods.

Chatterton said the retailer's food category targeted “foundational health” needs and had been designed to build out healthier diets for consumers in a very broad sense.

“Health foods shouldn't be scary, and that's really been the principle around it,” she added.

Beyond food, Holland & Barrett also launched a range of new sports nutrition products, designed to help consumers “keep active” and “moving well”, she said.

Featuring more than 100 active nutrition products, the launches are split across two different ranges: a more traditional offering, with proteins, macros, and wheys, and a newer concept via the retailer’s TriActive line, blurring body, muscle, and mind health.

The latter line, she said, was “opening up a completely brand-new market” – targeting people that might just be taking part in a 10 km run, going to yoga on a Tuesday, or walking with their kids in the park. And Holland & Barrett, she said, is planning a lot more innovation in this body-muscle-mind space over the coming years.

On the supplements side – the “crown jewels” of Holland & Barrett – the director said the team had evolved thinking for this category significantly and was just finalising the rollout of thousands of revamped lines.

The company had completely changed the “look and feel” of its supplements, Chatterton said, with new bottle designs – a mix between square and oval to offer a new global identity – and fresh on-pack messaging.

The labelling overhaul, she said, made packaging “really clean and simple to understand”, outlining what the product was; why the customer needed it; the overall mission of the product; and how often it needed to be consumed.

“It sounds so basic, but if you look at this category, it normally gives me a bit of an anxiety attack if I stand in most pharmacies across the world, because you just cannot understand what [a product] is doing and why. And we believe we've got a really big role to play in this going forward,” she said.

Holland & Barrett: Store spaces and global strategies

Beyond product development, Chatterton said Holland & Barrett was also busy transforming its store estate – shifting focus towards in-store services and wellbeing spaces – and continuing to invest heavily in staff training and education so that its employees can advise customers.

All of this, she said, played a “big role” in the retailer's goal to demystify health and wellness at a time when so many consumers feel overwhelmed in this space.

She added: “We work in an incredibly complex market and customers have got so many choices to make. And, actually, it's our job to make this simple and easy for people to understand.”

Holland & Barrett, she said, would remain dedicated to keeping its stores and offerings as simple as possible, focusing on global commonalities such as gut health, immunity, skin health, sleep, and weight management, and innovating in important areas like women's health and foundational diet offerings.

Importantly, the company will continue to develop products that are “very consumer centric”, she said, across a broad range of categories, from whole foods and teas to fortified bars, powders, and pills.

“It's about finding those perfect solutions for the customer that they really, really need. There's no point creating products that aren't going to fulfil those big health needs,” she said, adding: “We really see the last three years as setting our foundations of being a brilliant global health and wellness retailer, and really you'll only start to see this accelerate more as we grow globally.”